Unsung heroes of the big freeze

WHEN an elderly woman was leaving hospital to get home on Christmas Eve, she faced a difficult situation when the ambulance service struggled to get her through the snow and ice, just 200 yards away from her front door.

WHEN an elderly woman was leaving hospital to get home on Christmas Eve, she faced a difficult situation when the ambulance service struggled to get her through the snow and ice, just 200 yards away from her front door.

Her husband, whose 82nd birthday was on Christmas Day, sat waiting in the house with their grandson, and when the ambulance service pondered whether to turn back he wondered whether he would spend Christmas without her.

It’s jobs like these where the emergency services are sometimes not enough, yet the members of Rossendale and Pendle’s Mountain Rescue team came to help and the couple were together in time for the festivities.

The voluntary organisation which serves a 350-square mile area including Hyndburn, works on many ambulance assistance jobs like this.

Last year the team of 40 volunteers were called out to around 50 incidents between January and the middle of December. But following the extreme weather which has swept the country over the past few weeks, they have had to respond to the same number of incidents in just 10 days.

With snow, ice and freezing temperatures taking over East Lancashire, the Mountain Rescue Team are not only faced with the helicopter mountain rescues many of us associate with the charity.

Although the volunteers have dealt with high profile missing person cases, hang-gliding incidents and mountain biking accidents, they have also acted as a much-needed response to traffic collisions and emergencies that, through the extreme weather, the North West Ambulance Service, are struggling to get to.

When I met the team last week, they had just helped another elderly woman in East Lancashire who needed to get to a hospital dialysis appointment.

With so much snow surrounding her home, staff were unable to get her to the ambulance.

The mountain rescue team were able to ‘slide’ her to the ambulance and she was able to get to hospital.

A few hours in the company of treasurer Neil Woodhead, operational trainee Paul Petterson and casualty carer Ken Crossley, taught me that these volunteers will do whatever it takes to help people out of difficult and sometimes life-threatening situations.

Ken, an outdoor pursuits worker told me he had been so busy through the cold snap, he had been home for a maximum of eight hours in the space of four days.

On Christmas Eve alone, they helped out with 18 jobs across the area.

Ken said: "When the ambulances are that busy, we go to assist and on Christmas Eve we helped one woman get to hospital – she was in labour with twins.

"I go out mountaineering and walking every day so if something ever went wrong I would hope someone would come and help me."

Missing person cases led by Rossendale and Pendle’s Mountain Rescue team include that of 60-year-old Bernard Penine who went missing on Pendle Hill in April 2008.

Mr Penine had been out walking his neighbour’s dog when he suffered a broken leg and was left stranded in a gulley. When he didn’t return for five hours, the rescue team along with the police helicopter and Lancashire Fire and Rescue were called out for a search. Luckily Mr Penine was rescued.

The Haslingden-based team is made up of 30 volunteers and 10 trainees who give up as little or as much time as they can spare.

Each volunteer takes part in an introductory training programme which covers everything from how to apply a splint and administer the correct drugs to a patient, to the factors surrounding water rescues and how to use ropes.

The volunteers then attend further training every week and emergency vehicles are on the road 24 hours a day.

Each volunteer is fitted with a pager and depending on where they are, they can respond to incidents in the area.

Around once a year, the team may be called to a major mountain rescue with the RAF who release helicopters to get to moorland which covers two thirds of the team’s entire area.

Neil, whose full time job is working for an insurance company in Manchester, said: "We’ve got to be able to drop whatever we do at any time.

"You could be in Tesco with a trolley full of shopping and you’ve just got to leave. Sometimes you are the only hope that the person’s got.

"It’s worth the sacrifice when you manage to do something good for another person."